IF Brachey had approached that East Gate a year later he would have rolled comfortably into the city in a rickshaw (which has followed the white man into China) along a macadamized road bordered by curbing of concrete from the new railway station. But in the spring of 1907 there was no station, no pavement, not a rickshaw. The road was a deep-rutted way, dusty in dry weather, muddy in wet, bordered by the crumbling shops and dwellings found on the outskirts of every Chinese city. A high, bumpy little bridge of stone spanned the moat.

Over this bridge rode Brachey, in his humble cart, sitting fiat under a span of tattered matting, surrounded and backed by his boxes and bales of food and water and his personal baggage. John and the cook rode behind on mules. The muleteers walked.

Under the gate were lounging soldiers, coolies, beggars, and a money-changer or two with their bags of silver lumps, their strings of copper cash and their balanced scales. Two of the soldiers sprang forward and stopped the cart. Despite their ragged uniforms (of a dingy blue, of course, like all China, and capped with blue turbans) these were tall, alert men. Brachey was rapidly coming to recognize the Northern Chinese as a larger, browner, more vigorous type of being than the soft little yellow men of the South with whom he had long been familiar in the United States as well as in the East. A mure dangerous man, really, this northerner.

Brachey leaned back on his baggage and watched the little encounter between his John and the two soldiers. Any such conversation in China is likely to take up a good deal of time, with many gestures, much vehemence of speech and an 'ncreasing volume of interference from the inevitable curious crowd. The cook and the two muleteers joined the argument, Brachey had learned before the first evening that this interpreter of his had no English beyond the few pidgin phrases common to all speech along the coast. And since leaving Shau T'ing it had transpired that the man's Tientsin-Peking dialect sounded strange in the ears of Hansi John was now in the position of an interpreter who could make headway in neither of the languages in which he was supposed to deal. Brachey didn't mind. It kept the man still. And he had learned years earlier that the small affairs of routine traveling can be managed with but few spoken words. But just now, idly watching the little scene, he would have liked to know what it meant.

Finally John came to the cart, followed by shouts from the soldiers and the crowd.

“Card wanchee,” he managed to say.

“Card? No savvy,” said Brachey.

“Card,” John nodded earnestly.

Brachey produced his personal card, bearing his name in English and the address of a New York club.

John studied it anxiously, and then passed it to one of the soldiers. That official fingered it; turned it over; discussed it with his fellow. Another discussion followed.

Brachey now lost interest. He filled and lighted his pipe; then drew from a pocket a small leather-bound copy of The Bible in Spain, opened at a bookmark, and began reading.

There was a wanderer after his own heart—George Borrow! An eager adventurer, at home in any city of any clime, at ease in any company, a fellow with gipsies, bandits, Arabs, Jews of Gibraltar and Greeks of Madrid, known from Mogadore to Moscow. Bor-row's missionary employment puzzled him as a curious inconsistency; his skill at making much of every human contact was, to the misanthropic Brachey, enviable; his genius for solitude, his self-sufficiency in every state, whether confined in prison at Madrid or traversing alone the dangerous wilderness of Galicia, were to Brachey points of fine fellowship. This man needed no wife, no friend. His enthusiasm for the new type of human creature or the unfamiliar tongue never weakened.

The cart jolted, creaking, forward, into the low tunnel that served as a gateway through the massive wall. A soldier walked on either hand. Two other soldiers walked in the rear. The crowd, increasing every moment, trailed off behind. Small boys jeered, even threw bits of dirt and stones, one of which struck a soldier and caused a brief diversion.

They creaked on through the narrow, crowded streets of the city. A murmur ran ahead from shop to shop and corner to corner. Porters, swaying under bending bamboo, shuffled along at a surprising pace and crowded past. Merchants stood in doorways and puffed at lung pipes with tiny nickel bowls as the strange parade went by.

Finally it stopped. Two great studded gates swung inward, and the cart lurched into the courtyard of an inn.

Brachey appropriated a room, sent John for hot water, and coolly shaved. Then he stretched out on the folding cot above its square of matting, refilled his pipe and resumed his Borrow.

2

Within half an hour fresh soldiers appeared, armed with carbines and revolvers, and settled themselves comfortably, two of them, by his door; two others taking up a position at the compound gate.

They brought a letter, in Chinese characters, on red paper in a buff and red envelope, which Brachey examined with curiosity.

“No savvy,” he said.

But the faithful John, inarticulate from confusion and fright could not translate.

Between this hour in mid-afternoon and early evening, six of these documents were passed in through Brachey's door. With the last one, John appeared to see a little light.

“Number one policeman wanchee know pidgin belong you,” he explained laboriously.

That would doubtless mean the police minister. So they wanted to know his business! But as matters stood, with no other medium of communication than John's patient but bewildered brain, explanation would be difficult. Brachey reached for his book and read on. Something would have to happen, of course. It really hardly mattered what. He even felt a little relief. The authorities might settle his business for him. Pack him off. It would be better. M. Pourmont's letter to Griggsby Doane had burned in his pocket for two days. It had seemed to press him, like the hand of fate, to Betty's very roof. Now, since he had become—the simile rose—a passive shuttlecock, a counterplay of fate might prove a way out of his dilemma.

He had chicken fried in oil for his dinner. And John ransacked the boxes for dainties; as if the occasion demanded indulgence.

At eight John knocked with shaking hands at his door. It was dark in the courtyard, and a soft April rain was falling. Two fresh soldiers stood there, each with carbine on back and a lighted paper lantern in band. A boy from the inn held two closed umbrellas of oiled paper.

“Go now,” said John, out of a dry throat.

“Go what side?” asked Brachey, surveying the little group.

John could not answer.

Brachey compressed his lips; stood there, knocking his pipe against the door-post. Then, finally, he put on overcoat and rubber overshoes, took one of the umbrellas, and set forth.

3

They walked a long way through twisting, shadowy streets, first a soldier with the boy from the inn, then Brachey under his umbrella, then John under another, then the second soldier. Dim figures finished past them. Once the quaint waihng of stringed instruments floated out over a compound wall. They passed through a dark tunnel that must have been one of the city gates; then on through other streets.

They stopped at a gate house. A door opened, and yellow lamplight fell warmly across the way. Brachey found himself stepping up into a structure that was and yet was not Chinese. A smiling old gate-keeper received him with striking courtesy, and, to his surprise, in English.

“Will you come with me, sir?”

John and the soldiers waited in the gate house.

Brachey followed the old man across a paved court. His pulse quickened. Where were they bringing him?

Through a window he saw a white woman sitting at a desk, under an American lamp.

He mounted stone steps, left his coat and hat in a homelike front hall. The servant led the way up a flight of carpeted stairs.

On the top step, Brachey paused. At the end of the corridor, where a chair or two, a table, bookcase, and lamp made a pleasant little lounge, a young woman sat quietly reading. She looked up; sat very still, gazing straight at him out of a white face. It was Betty. His heart seemed to stop.

Then a man stood before him. A little, dusty blond man. They were clasping hands. He was ushered rather abruptly into a study. The door closed.

The little man said something twice. It proved to be, “I am Mr. Boatwright,” and he was looking down at the much-thumbed card; Brachey's own card.

Brachey was fighting to gather his wits. Why hadn't he spoken to Betty, or she to him? Would she wait there to see him? If not, how could he reach her?... He must reach her, of course. He knew now that through all his confusion of mind and spirit he had come straight to her.

4

The little man was nervous, Brachey observed; even jumpy. He hurried about, drawing down the window-shades. Then he sat at a desk and with twitching fingers rolled a pencil about. He cleared his throat.

“You've come in from the railroad?” he asked.... “Yes? Do you bring news?”

“No,” said Brachey coldly.

“What gossip have your boys picked up along the road, may I ask?”

Back and forth, back and forth, his fingers twitched the pencil. Bradley's eyes narrowly followed the movement. After a little, he replied:

“I have no information from my boys.”

“Seven years ago”—thus Mr. Boatwright, huskily, “they killed all but a few of us. Now the trouble has started again—a similar trouble They attacked our station up at So T'ung yesterday. Mr. Doane is on his way there now. He left this noon. That is why they referred your case to me. Oh. yes, I should have told you—the tao-tai, Chang Chili Ting, has asked me to get from you an explanation of your appearance here without a passport. But perhaps your card explains. You come simply as a journalist?”

Brachey bowed.

“You have no connection w ith the Ho Shan Company?”

“None”

“Chang is taking up your case this evening with the provincial judge, Pao Ting Chuan. Pao is to give you an audience to-morrow, I believe, at noon. I will act as your interpreter.” Mr. Boatwright paused, and sighed. “I am very busy.”

“I regret this intrusion on your time,” said Brachey. It was impossible for him to be more than barely courteous to such a man as this.

“Oh, that's all right,” Boatwright replied vaguely. “The audience will probably be at noon. Then you will come back here with me for tiffin.” He sighed again; then went on. “They shot one of Pourmont's white men. Through the lungs.... You must have seen Pourmont at Ping Yang, as you came through.”

“I called on him.”

“Didn't he tell you?”

“No. He advised against my coming on.”

“Of course. It's really very difficult. He wants us all to get out, as far as his compound. But, you see, our predicament is delicate. Already they've attacked one of our outposts. But the trouble may not spread. We can't draw in our people and leave at the first sign of difficulty. It would be interpreted as weakness not only on our part but on the part of all the white governments as well. Mr. Doane, I know”—he said this rather regretfully—“would never consent to that.... Mr. Doane is a strong man. We shall all breathe a little more easily when he is safely back. If he should not get back—well, you will see that I must face this situation—-the decision would fall on me. That's why I asked you for news. I have to consider the problem from every angle. We have other stations about the province and we must plan to draw all our people in before we can even consider a general retreat.”

Brachey heard part of this. He wished the man would keep still: His own racing thoughts were with that pale girl in the hall. Was she still there? He must plan. He must be prepared with something to say, if they should meet face to face.

As it turned out, they met on the stairs. Betty was coming up. She paused; looked up, then down. The color stole back into her face; flooded it. She raised her hand, hesitatingly.